(question does not apply to military or police situations, "warning-shots", or "effective" deterrence by having its presence known the to potential attacker...just an actual shot fired, hitting or killing said attacker)

but I wouldn't want to be without it if someone ever did break into my house when I was home. It happens every few minutes in this country. I wouldn't think twice about busting a cap into some a-hole who came into my house.

If someone broke into my house (I'm a petite woman with a child), you bet I would to protect my son and me. My stuff? Don't care. They can walk out with my stereo if they want - that's why I have renters insurance.

I would also make sure I was properly trained and used frangible ammunition because I live in a condo complex. And I would be sure I was trained enough to have the conviction to take that shot.

I have read your posts on this thread and I will not say what is on my mind because I would be banned for it.

I do hope that you are never in a situation where a firearm would have helped you.

And if you are even in such a situation, I hope there is someone nearby with a firearm who is able to help you.

You remind of a news story a couple of years ago. A crazed man went into a Wal-Mart with a knife and proceeded to stab shoppers, most seriously the store manager. While he was ontop of the store manager repeatedly stabbing him a women with a pistol in her purse came up and put the gun to his head and told him to stop or she would kill him. He stopped, police later arrived and took him away.

A women in the store at the time was interviewed by the press. Her comment... She was upset about the women with the gun and that it was wrong for her to have it and she was nervous about it. It scared her. NO MENTION of the man on a rampage with a knife stabbing people. That didn't bother her. She was upset about the women who saved peoples lives with her hand gun.

On Edit: And under the bogus question of your poll, she doesn't qualify as having used a gun for self defense or a deterent. Which she clearly did.

and I knew it would take the police/sheriff AT LEAST 20 minutes to answer a call, I sure slept better at night knowing that if someone broke in I could at least 'fire a warning shot' and could DO something to deter an intruder and take care of myself for awhile till the police got there.

just me and my wife. If I had kids the gun would be in a drawer, high up, with no bullet in the chamber, and on safety. I grew up with a gun in the house, but my dad taught me the respect that guns deserve. he didn't keep it some big secret which just makes kids want to sneak in and look at all the more. I never bothered with it, because he made me understand what it could do. That's the problem, these anti-gun people act like it's a playboy mag. hiding it, acting like it's a big secret. Kids should be exposed to it and learn to respect it.

and I went and played with them. I also found out that my child was at a friend's house who brought out his father's guns to show off. I think you need to lock them up when, or if, you have kids in your house.

show you the gun, explain the damage it can do, and tell you not to mess with it. Did he take you out to a range and teach you to shoot it so you could feel the power it has? Maybe he should have, then you wouldn't be going behind his back f*cking with it.

a gun in the house, accessable in seconds incase some loony idiot breaks into your house, or no gun or a gun so locked up that you gotta fumble with a key at 3:00am giving some killer that just broke into your house ample time to bust everyone up before you even have a chance to defend yourself or your family? You anti-gun people are rediculous. Cars kill more people than guns every year, let's ban those too.

...for a weapon is essential for children. Even if you do the right thing and keep it in a safe place, inaccessible to children, they will probably be in a friend's house where those precautions aren't taken. In that case, they will HAVE to know what to do, and what not to do, when the situation is not as controlled as at home.

I have a small one weapon safe with a fingerprint sensor bolted to the floor beneath my bed. In an emergency, I just need to put my finger on the pad, the door pops open, and my loaded weapon is ready for use. My kids, on the other hand, would need an acetylene torch to get at it

My point from the other day was that there wouldn't be problems if guns were banned...could bad guys have guns? Oh sure, black market and whatnot... but the chance that anyone would have a gun would be greatly diminished. Then, most folks wouldn't need to own a gun themselves for "self-defense".

That's not saying I want guns banned, but I will say that... Drugs are banned (certain drugs, anyway) and the justification is that the person is doing him/herself harm and must be "helped" If that's the logic about drugs, why aren't alcohol and nicotine banned? If people are saying that guns aren't the issue, but people who use them improperly are...then why not the same "ban" logic?

Making sure that gun-manufacturers don't create faulty weapons.Making sure that gun manufacturers don't false advertise.Making sure that gun manufacturers don't defraud their customers.And, making sure that the information necessary to make intelligent decisions about storage and safety of guns.

I live out in the sticks right now. Being unable to defend myself would be the same as not having homeowners insurance. I keep my 1911 in a drawer next to the bed and a loaded shotgun by the front door. I also have my m1a in the safe if needed. The county I live in has very few "hot" robberies(occupied homes) and I attribute the above average gun ownership rate for this. Criminals fear an armed homeowner more than they do the police.

The obvious difference is that perjury is a non-violent crine; one cannot even reasonably pre-suppose a violent intent from perjury. Breaking-and-entering, on the other hand, inherently pre-supposes such a malign intent. It is highly unlikely that john Doe is going to unlawfully enter the locked dwelling of another to have a comfy place to sit and catch his breath following a long walk...

The law defines (in IL, at least) *any* unlawful attempt to enter a dwelling as either burglary (entering with the intent to commit a felony there in) or breaking-and-entering (entering without the intent to commit a felony0; both are classed as felonies, one lesser and one greater.

and in other urban areas, there are a fair number of invasion robberies by gang members/whatever who have no hesitation to kill whoever's in the house. I am NOT going to gamble my life or my son's life on the chance that they're a petty criminal just looking for a little swag. Would you?

As far as banning guns goes, criminals will always have access to firearms. When the law-abiding citizen gives up his/her right to self-defense, they come prey. I do not intend to become prey.

If someone breaks into my house, I AM THE VICTIM. The intruder is NOT the victim. If I defend myself, and in the process badly injure or kill the intruder, the status has not changed. I AM STILL THE VICTIM. I have prevented myself from being further victimized, but I am still the victim. My attacker is still the attacker, his status is now unsuccessful attacker.

Of course if I continue the fight past the point where he stops victimizing me, then I become the attacker.

and, again, are you saying that Bush was justified in preparing for and executing "shock and awe"? That's much better analogy than the cooked-up tripe you offer.

Oh, and by-the-by...I kept the deterrent response out of the possibility for a YES vote because I knew you gunnies would use it. That's ALSO like Tom Ridge saying that "lack of a terrorist incident since 9/11 is an indication of our effectiveness in combatting it."

When you define "self defense" so narrowly that it excludes almost all of the justifiable self defenses out there, what did you expect?

Try this on for size.

Let's define "rape" as a man who has had his penis severed and reattached in the past having sex with a woman when she's drunk, been given rohypnol, is getting a tattoo from a midget on her arm and it's done in a public bar on a pool table in front of a bunch of Mormon missionaries who are all chanting "Regent University!" while the Mormons are all dressed in flowing Sun-God robes and throwing little pickles at the barkeep. ANY other scenario, by definition, isn't rape. Given that definition, "rape" almost never happens, right?

That's the same exact kind of bullshit "logic" you're trying to foist off on us.

If I were home alone, sleeping and minding my own business (and not in a bad neighborhood, either, so that risk factor is reduced), and someone broke in, armed with malicious intent - what would you have me do? 911 response time is not instantaneous. I don't have a basement or a garage, or any hiding place that's out of the way.

If I'm trained and have access to a gun for my self-defense - what else would you have me do to ensure my survival?

I am asking this seriously. I'm 5'2" and cannot overpower the intruder.

I was sitting on my pistol (holster in the small of the back). These 2 fuckers try to break into my car from the driver's side door. One of them stood behind the other with his hands in his starter jacket. My guess was he was concealing a gun.

Eventhough I had a gun, the number one thing I wanted to do was get the fuck out of there, so I did, nearly causing an accident.

But, I know that if push came to shove, somebody was going to die that day. It could have been me or them, but I know that I was not going to be a helpless victim.

30 years, not a thing happens to me, then bam bam, twice in one weekend. If I can go another 30 without another crime against me, that'd be great. Otherwise, I will continue to hedge my safety by packing a firearm.

while hanging out with some fellow workers of the natural law party in north carolina in '96 we were in a small country roadside bar in western NC and we were verbally accosted because we had long hair and were dressed like hippies in tie dyes and sandles by a half dozen semi-drunk red necks who threatened us and called us a bunch of hippie queers. we left the bar immediately and the red necks proceeded to follow us to my car, where i pulled out my pistol i keep under the driver's seat and stood there with it in plain sight, and asked them if they had a problem with us. they backed off immediately. we were two guys and two women, and had i not pulled my gun out i believe they would have fucked us up.

I hope I never have to either. I don't really own them for "self-defense" anyway. I just like to go to the firing range and blast the shit out of targets. My guns are so securely locked and hidden, that I would never have time to get to them to use in self defense.

It's one of the reasons I refuse to support any candidate that opposes gun rights. In 1996 a burglar/attempted rapist broke into my house in broad daylight and attacked my wife. He pinned her down with a knife to her throat and was pulling down her shorts with the obvious intention of raping her...with my 1 year old daughter watching (he actually told my wife that he'd "kill the kid" if she didn't cooperate). Unfortunatly for the burglar, I was UPSTAIRS at the time. I heard my wife scream "Help!" and then "Get out of my house", and then heard the low voice of an angry man and realized that something was very wrong. I grabbed my gun, charged down the stairs, and was presented with the sight of this guy (his "tool" already out and ready) standing over my wife (draped over our couch), with a knife to her neck and her shorts almost completely off.

I never warned him off, announced my presence, or threatened him...I just fired a single round into his back.

My wife was physically unharmed, but it took her several years to mentally get past what had happened...we even had to move because she was terrified to be in the house alone. The burglar/attempted rapist survived, and will be released from prison in 2007 (he was sentenced to ten years). I, in that instant, became a permanent advocate of gun ownership.

She's mostly put it behind her, but there are a few lingering changes that may never go away. She loves to open the doors and windows in our home and let the breeze flow through, but she doesn't do it anymore if I'm not home. She also tends to get a bit jumpy on windy days when the trees and bushes are making noise outside. She wont admit it, but she still has a little lingering paranoia that it will happen again.

On the flipside, my previously gun-hating wife asked me to teach her how to shoot afterwards, and can now out-shoot me at 50 yards

Since my daughter was only one at the time, she doesn't remember a thing, and doesn't seem to have been affected AT ALL by the whole encounter.

my message to edit it, so I'll just add on. That's very good that your wife now has the skills to handle a weapon with confidence. That will do more for her continued recovery than she may have known at the beginning. I did a little bit of target shooting about 12 years ago. It was a wonderful challenge, which is why I enjoy fencing as well.

I am glad you were at home to save your family. I am so glad your child has no memory of the attack, it isn't a thing a child should have to deal with. I also admire your restraint, you didn't follow up with a double tap to the head. Scum like that have no place on earth.

I was standing about 15 feet behind him and my wife was lying on the other side, which means she was already potentially in the line of fire. Since my wife wasn't upright, I aimed high to avoid her. The bullet hit him in the shoulder and fragmented, shattering his right shoulder blade, a few ribs, and puncturing his right lung. With his shoulder shattered, he couldn't hold the knife and collapsed to the floor. At that point I got lucky...if he had continued to fight I wouldn't have been able to shoot again because my wife was now DIRECTLY in the line of fire. He didn't move though, and my wife was able to get up, grab the baby, and run upstairs to call 911.

It took the police nine minutes to reach my house, and I have to tell you that those were the hardest nine minutes of my life...as I stood over this guy who had invaded my home, attacked and tried to rape my wife, and threatened the life of my daughter. I stood there with my gun pointed at his head and every ounce of my being wanted to pull that trigger, to get even with this creep, to get revenge, to prevent him from doing this again, to pay him back for the damage he'd just done to my wife and home (even after all these years it's easy to take myself back to that moment and feel angry about it again).

And yet something stopped me from pulling that trigger a second time. It wasn't a fear of prosecution...I could have easily argued that he tried to get up and fight again and that I'd simply been defending myself, but that never really crossed my mind. I fired that first shot without hesitation because it was the right thing to do...a woman was being viciously assaulted in her own home and it needed to be stopped. After he went down, however, the situation changed, and he wasn't a threat anymore...and I just didn't have it in me to execute this guy. Personally, I consider that a GOOD thing.

for telling the rest of your story. I admire you for your quick action in protecting your family, and your good sense and restraint at a time when it must have been SO difficult. I'm going to save your message and eventually show it to my son. Thank you.

What a ridiculous poll question. The fact that you exclude both warning shots and deterrence by brandishing a gun distorts your results. Isn't firing a warning shot self-defense with a gun? Isn't brandishing a weapon to deter an attacker self-defense with a gun? These two categories definitely need to be included to make your home-made poll more honest and accurate.

Second, the results you do come up with support the fact that guns save lives. If 19% of gun owners have used a gun to deter an attacker, multiply .19 times the number of gun owners in this country. You will get a surprisingly large number of incidents in which the use of a gun prevented a crime. Studies show that guns are used defensively 500,000 to 2 million times per year. I say we need more handguns in honest peoples' hands.

question does not apply to military or police situations, "warning-shots", or "effective" deterrence by having its presence known the to potential attacker...just an actual shot fired, hitting or killing said attacker)

The overwhelming number of times a firearm is used in self defense and as a deterent the firearm is never fired. Including the 1 time I have used a firearm to defend myself and my property.

IMO you're perpetuating a misunderstanding that the only way a gun can be USED defensively is to fire it. That does not present an accurate picture of how people use their guns defensively most of the time.

I have on several occasions over the last 10 years armed myself with a loaded pistol and a big flashlight while investigating either noises I heard outside of my house or responding to reports from neighbors that they thought they saw someone sneaking around the side of my property. In every case I concluded that the noises or sightings were animals like cats or skunks and not humans. Had I encountered a hostile animal or human who would not listen to reason I was prepared to fire the gun.

I would not count those as actual defensive gun uses either, but just wish to clarify that there are a lot of shades of gray between absolutely not deploying a gun defensively and firing a round at an "attacker".

Even if you shot your gun at an attacker with the intent to kill but missed, causing the attacker to flee, you have not used the gun in self defense. A completely dishonest poll trying to skew the debate. Happily, it's a weak and transparent attempt.

When I say 'drop', the ONLY reason I will not shoot that m-f deader than a mackerel will be if I hear the sound of his body hitting the floor face down and spread-eagled. There will not be a poll or a focus group on the issue--- it's my way or a cold slab in the morgue.

Deal with it, and sing "Kumbaya", if some of you folks don't think that's the proper response!

Furthermore, it has driven an artificial wedge into the heart of the Democratic party, driving away people who were long-time (even multi-generational) members; this is why I made the distinction about 'left wingnuts', rather than simply 'left'.

As you can tell by my post count, I haven't been here long as a poster. I had lurked for a decent amount of time. But to be totally honest, I can not think of a single post of Terwilliger's that I have agreed with. There has to be the odd one here or there, but currently I am drawing a blank.

But after today's courthouse shooting I am giving it some serious consideration.

By the way, I notice that Terwilliger has made no comment whatsoever on post #72 and the replies to it. Surely, this is a relevant answer to your question that you'll want to immediately wigh in on, right? Perhaps some questions about the "victim's" motivation?

that Terwilliger is under the impression that all those stories he hears from time to time about people defending themselves and family with firearms are concocted in the heads of NRA lunatics and can not possibly be the truth. So he is rightly ignoring the post as the pure propaganda that it is.

I wish someone had, too. Somewhere in this thread was a post about that stabbing spree at Wal-Mart, where some deranged jerk went wild and stabbed several people, including the manager; the lunatic had the manager down and was going in for the kill when some woman pulled her pistol out of her purse and shot the guy, stopping him. The media then managed to get some other woman who saw it all happen, and all she did was go on and on about how horrifying it was that the lady who shot the lunatic had a gun in her ourse!

The Wal-Mart story was posted by me. You were off on one detail. She didn't shoot the guy. she put the gun to his head and let him know she would kill him if he didn't stop.

That story has always stuck in my head and I will never forget it. Along with many other similar stories. Regardless of how big a myth the "liberal media" is, there is no doubt tha there is a major anti-gun bias in the major media, and most local media as well.

Like the story about a year ago where a student at a Law School in Virginia (I think it was VA, but might have been MD) was shooting people and he was stopped by other students. All news reports talked of how fellow students stopped the shooter. But not a single news story the day it happened, or for several after mentioned how the students stopped him. THEY HAD GUNS!

And being that she didn't shoot him, this action does not qualify as defence with a firearm in Terwilligers world.

that incident felt pretty close to home. You see, I'm an attorney and, as such, deal with some ... well, let's say "emotionally delicate" people (working both for and, quite often, against them). I have been threatened in the past and I could easily see myself as that attorney.

To make a long story short, I had been traveling with my ex,we were in LA (not a great part of town)in a van, I took a short walk in broad daylight, three guys whistled me, I turned around and started walking back to the van, they followed me, I started to run, they ran after me, my ex was in the drivers seat of the van, saw the guys chasing me, took his rifle from behind the seat, got out of the van, and pointed it at the guys that were chasing me. They turned around and ran away immediately.

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